An Atttractive Therapy: Animal Magnetism in Eighteenth-Century England

Vinchon J. , Mesmer et son secret (Toulouse, 1936), 96–97.

For the song, see Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection Hennin, Q^bl (M98134); for the cartoon, see the Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection du magnétisme animal, tome 13, num. 150 (4Tbb2).

Letter from Joseph Banks to Charles Blagden of 5 August 1788, summarized in Dawson W. R. , The Banks letters (London, 1958), 66. Mesmer was also rumoured to have visited London in 1784 to escape Parisian hostility and drum up support in the masonic lodges: Peaumerelle C. , La philosophie des vapeurs ou correspondance d'une jolie femme, nouvelle édition, augmentée d'un petit traité des crises magnétiques à l'usage des mesmériennes (Paphos, 1784), p. ix.

According to the OED, the first English use of the term ‘mesmerism’ was in 1802, in an Italian's narrative about Sweden ( Acerbi J. , Travels through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland, to the North Cape, in the years 1798 and 1799 (London, 1802), 89–91, 269–74). Horace Walpole used the word in a letter of 1 July 1789 to Lady Ossory: Lewis W. S. , The Yale edition of Horace Walpole's correspondence (48 vols, London, 1937–83), xxxiv, 50–51. The times referred to “the Mesmerists” in an article about Richard Brothers of 4 March 1795.

Altick R. D. , The shows of London (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 82–85. For Katterfelto, see also Brown A. S. , “Gustavus Katterfelto: Mason and magician”, Ars quatuor coronatorum, lxix (1956), 136–8, and Money J. , Experience and identity (Manchester, 1977), 140–1. One of Katterfelto's posters is reproduced in Bishop G. D. , “A history of the teaching of physics in England from 1650 to 1850” (Ph.D. thesis, London, 1959), 370, but with no source. There are numerous newspaper clippings in Sophia Banks's collection of broadsides, British Library, press mark L.R.301.h.3. For a fuller analysis of Graham, with numerous references to the literature, see Porter R. , Health for sale: Quackery in England 1660–1850 (Manchester, 1989), 156–72. Particularly relevant are Graham J. , A sketch: Or, short description of Dr Graham's medical apparatus, &c. erected about the beginning of the year 1780, in his house, on the Royal Terrace, Adelphi, London (London, 1780) and the contemporary newspaper clippings in vol. iii of the Lysons collectanea, iii, ff. 157–73 (5 vols, British Library pressmark c.l03.k.l1). See also the Bodleian Douce Add MSS items 240/1 and 446.

For examples of Katterfelto's provincial advertising campaign, see The Norfolk chronicle for 4 December, 11 December, 18 December, 24 December 1784 and 1 January, 8 January, 15 January 1785. These advertisements differed substantially from each other, but Katterfelto probably replicated them in other towns he visited.

The most useful bibliographies covering the extensive literature on Mesmer's career are provided in: Amadou R. , F-A. Mesmer: Le magnétisme animal (Paris, 1971); Darnton R. , Mesmerism and the end of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, Mass., 1968); Crabtree A. , Animal magnetism, early hypnotism, and psychical research, 1766–1925 (New York, 1988). In addition to Darnton's account, useful and varying interpretations in English include Duveen D. Klickstein H. , “Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: Investigations”, Annals of science, xi (1955), 271–303; Duveen D. Klickstein H. , “Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: Documentation”, Annals of science, xiii (1957), 30–46; Ellenberger H. , The discovery of the unconscious (New York, 1970), 53–83; Tatar M. , Spellbound (Princeton, 1978), 3–30; Gillispie C. C. , Science and polity in France at the end of the old regime (Princeton, 1980), 261–89; Gauld A. , A history of hypnotism (Cambridge, 1992), 1–123; Wilson L. , Women and medicine in the French Enlightenment (Baltimore, 1993), 104–24; Crabtree A. , From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic sleep and the roots of psychological healing (New Haven and London, 1993).

The major exceptions discussing England are: Miller J. , “Mesmerism”, The listener, xc (1973), 685–90; Porter R. , “‘Under the influence’: Mesmerism in England”, History today, xxxv (1985), 22–29; Richards G. , Mental machinery: The origins and consequences of psychological ideas (London, 1992), 271–8. I am grateful to Joost Vijselaar for sending me these two pieces on eighteenth-century animal magnetism in Holland and Germany: Vijselaar J. , “The reception of animal magnetism in the Netherlands”, Proceedings of the 1st European Congress on the History of Psychiatry and Mental Health Care (Rotterdam, 1993), 32–38; Feldt H. , “Der Begriff der Kraft in Mesmerismus” (dissertation, Bonn University, 1990), 102–18. For mesmerism and slavery in a French colony, see McClellan J. E. , Colonialism and science: Saint Domingue in the old régime (Baltimore, 1992), 175–80.

Particularly relevant critiques of this stance include Cooter R. , “Deploying ‘pseudoscience’: Then and now”, in Hanen M. P. Osier M. J. Weyant R. G. (eds), Science, pseudoscience and society (Ontario, 1980), 237–72, and “Alternative medicine, alternative cosmology”, in Cooter R. (ed.), Studies in the history of alternative medicine (London, 1988), 63–78.

Darnton , op. cit. (ref. 7); Porter , “‘Under the influence’” (ref. 8). One typical recent example, significant because of the excellence of the book, is Golinski J. , Science as public culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992), 171. For a recent interpretation locating French mesmerism in debates on women's health, see Wilson , op. cit. (ref. 7).

Gillespie R. , “Ballooning in France and Britain, 1783–1786”, Isis, lxxv (1984), 249–68.

Cooter R. , “The history of mesmerism in Britain: Poverty and promise”, in Schott H. (ed.), Franz Anton Mesmer und die Geschichte des Mesmerismus (Stuttgart, 1985), esp. pp. 152–8.

Porter R. , “Before the fringe: ‘Quackery’ and the eighteenth-century medical market”, in Cooter R. (ed.), Alternative medicine (ref. 9), 1–27; Health for sale, op. cit. (ref. 5); “The language of quackery in England, 1660–1800”, in Burke P. Porter R. (eds), The social history of language (Cambridge, 1987), 73–103. See also Jewson N. D. , “Medical knowledge and the patronage system in 18th century England”, Sociology, viii (1974), 369–85, and “The disappearance of the sick-man from medical cosmology, 1770–1870”, Sociology, x (1976), 225–44.

Schaffer S. , “Natural philosophy and public spectacle in the eighteenth century”, History of science, xxi (1983), 1–43, and “The consuming flame: Electrical showmen and Tory mystics in the world of goods”, in Brewer J. Porter R. (eds), Consumption and the world of goods (London, 1992), 489–526.

Schaffer S. , “Self-evidence”, Critical inquiry, xviii (1992), 327–62; Spary E. Winter A. , “The body which speaks to the body: Mesmerism and the politics of public conduct 1780–1850”, paper presented at the Wellcome Institute, London, 1993. For magicians' control through eroticism, see Couliano I. , Eros and magic in the Renaissance (Chicago and London, 1987).

Pickstone J. V. , “Ways of knowing: Towards a historical sociology of science, technology and medicine”, The British journal for the history of science, xxvi (1993), 433–58.

Fara P. , “Magnetic England in the eighteenth century” (Ph.D. thesis, London, 1993).

But they do resemble some modern counterculture therapies. See, for example, Gala D. , Be your own doctor with magnet therapy (Bombay, 1992) for a lengthy and detailed set of illustrated instructions couched in post-Maxwellian terminology.

Voltaire F. , Letters on England (London, 1980), 68.

The best account of eighteenth-century magnetic research throughout Europe is Home R. , “Introduction”, in Home R. Connor P. (eds), Æpinus's essay on the theory of electricity and magnetism (Princeton, 1979), 1–224. For an analysis focusing on England, and providing a more detailed comparison with France, see Fara , op. cit. (ref. 17). For the distinctiveness of England during the Enlightenment, see Porter R. , “The Enlightenment in England”, in Porter R. Teich M. (eds), The Enlightenment in national context (Cambridge, 1981), 1–18.

For a biographical account, see Fara P. , “‘Master of practical Magnetics’: The construction of an eighteenth-century natural philosopher”, forthcoming in Enlightenment and dissent.

Collinson Peter , for example, excitedly reported to an American colleague that “Hither to I have wrote only to blot paper but now I tell you Some thing new Doc^r night a Physition has found the Art of Giveing Such a magnetic power to Steel that the poor old Loadstone is putt quite out of Countenance”: Letter to Cadwallader Colden of 26 April 1745, reproduced in Colden C. , The letters and papers of Cadwallader Colden (9 vols, New York, 1917–23), iii, 113–15, p. 114.

Schofield R. E. , The Lunar Society of Birmingham (Oxford, 1963), 51, 105. For a fuller analysis, see Fara P. , “‘A treasure of hidden virtues’: The attraction of magnetic marketing”, The British journal for the history of science, in press.

McClellan J. E. , Science reorganised (New York, 1985), 29–34; Konvitz J. W. , Cartography in France 1660–1848 (Chicago, 1987), 1–31; Gillispie , op. cit. (ref. 7), 74–184.

Rivoire P. , Traités sur les aimans artificiels (Paris, 1752), pp. i–lxxxv; Duhamel H. , “Façon singulière d'aimanter un barreau d'acier”, Mémoires de mathématique & de physique de l'Académie Royale des Sciences , 1745, 181–93; Duhamel H. , “Différens moyens pour perfectionner la boussole”, ibid. , 1750, 154–65; Fuss N. , Observations et expériences sur les aimans artificiels, principalement sur la meilleure manière de les faire (St Petersburg, 1778); Coulomb C. , “Septième mémoire sur l'électricité et le magnétisme”, Mémoires de mathématique & de physique de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1789, 455–505, pp. 501–5.

Konvitz , op. cit. (ref. 24), 1–31; Briggs R. , “The Académie Royale des Sciences and the pursuit of utility”, Past and present, cxxxi (1991), 38–88 (esp. pp. 66–81). As a specific example related to magnetism, the French king's physician Nicolas-Philippe Ledru visited London in 1766 to learn about making compasses. On his return to Paris, he obtained a royal license to make instruments, convert iron to steel by what he called Knight's process, and requisitioned charts and magnetic observations made by the navy for his own projects. See: Ledru-Rollin Papiers (Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris), no. 2013, vol. i, f. 46; entry in the 1859 edition of Nouvelle biographie générale depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu 'à nos jours; for Ledru's later involvement in electrical and magnetic therapy, see Sutton G. , “Electric medicine and mesmerism”, Isis, lxxii (1981), 375–92.

Andry C. Thouret M. , “Observations et recherches sur l'usage de l'aimant en médecine, ou mémoire sur le magnétisme médecinal”, Histoires et mémoires de la Société Royale de Médecine, iii (1782), 531–688 (esp. pp. 558–653: The attribution of English priority is on p. 562). See also de la Touche H. , “Wonderful property of magnets to cure the tooth-ach”, The annual register, viii (1765), 112, and Andry C. Thouret M. , “Rapport sur les aimans présentés par M l'Abbé Le Noble”, Extrait des registres de la Société Royale de Médecine, 1783, 13.

See van Swinden J. , Analogie de l'électricité et du magnétisme, ou recueil de mémoires, couronnés par l'Académie de Bavière (La Haye, 1784) for the entries in a prize competition on a comparison of electricity and magnetism. Jan Hendrik van Swinden, Celestin Steiglehner and Laurent Hübner give detailed accounts of their experiments to evaluate the effects of magnets on people. This book was favourably reviewed in England: Monthly review, lxxii (1785), 528–41.

Ramsey M. , “Traditional medicine and medical enlightenment: The regulation of secret remedies in the Ancien Régime”, Historical reflections/Réflexions historiques, ix (1982), 215–32, and Professional and popular medicine in France, 1770–1830 (Cambridge, 1988), 17–70; Porter , Health for sale (ref. 5), 26–31; Gillispie , op. cit. (ref. 7), 187–256. See also Ramsey M. , “The popularisation of medicine in France, 1650–1850”, in Porter R. (ed.), The popularisation of medicine 1650–1900 (New York, 1992), 97–133.

Histoire de la Société Royale de Médecine, 1779, 8–9.

Gillispie , op. cit. (ref. 7), 271–2. See also de la Condamine C.-M. , “Observations sur la vertu de l'aimant contre le mal des dents”, Journal de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie, &c., xxvii (1767), 265–72.

Andry Thouret , “Observations et recherches”, op. cit. (ref. 27). The numerous magnetic therapists they mentioned included Jacques de Harsu in Geneva (for whom see Walmsley D. M. , Anton Mesmer (London, 1967), 75–76 and de Harsu J. , Recueil des effets salutaires de l'aimant dans les maladies (Geneva, 1782)) and the abbé Le Noble, a French provincial canon.

Andry Thouret , “Rapport sur les aimans” (ref. 27). They asserted that they had observed real effects, incontestably due not to chance but to magnetic action, even in illnesses of long-standing duration. In the English press, one reviewer summarized their work neutrally ( The monthly review , lxviii (1783), 563–4) and German research, including Mesmer's, was also briefly reported ( The monthly review , lix (1778), 61). Thouret later published a sceptical report on animal magnetism: Thouret M. , Recherches et doutes sur le magnétisme animal (Paris, 1784).

An account in The monthly review , lviii (1778), 513–14 portrays Mesmer as an innocent dupe. Other reports were neutral summaries: The monthly review , lix (1778), 61 and lxviii (1783), 563–4. News of Mesmer's activities did, of course, reach Britain by various routes, although interest seems to have been restricted to limited circles. Reports in The times were sceptical but brief: 30 November 1785, 7 September 1786, 7 October 1786, 17 November 1786. In Bristol, William Dyer noted in his diary on 8 September 1781 that a German Count at Strasbourg was performing cures free of charge and seemed to possess the secret of the philosophers' stone: Bristol Central Library, B20095, SR4, vol. i. Mesmer wrote to Banks and sent over copies of books by himself and his colleagues: Letter from Mesmer to Banks of 11 February 1782, BL Add MSS 8095, ff. 99–100. Accounts were also included in personal correspondence, such as the May 1784 letter from John Grieve to Joseph Black reproduced in Ramsay W. , The life and letters of Joseph Black, MD (London, 1918), 84–85.

Godwin W. , Report of Dr Benjamin Franklin, and other commissioners, charged by the king of France, with the examination of the animal magnetism as now practised at Paris (London, 1785). Lengthy summaries of the report appeared in The gentleman's magazine , liv (1784), 944–6 and The London medical journal , v (1784), 266–77. For Godwin's identity as translator, see Schaffer , “Self evidence” (ref. 15), 358. I should like to maintain that the links between radical activity and animal magnetism were negligible in England at the end of the eighteenth century, but of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I can only report that, despite assiduous research, I have failed to find any such connections.

By comparing the texts, it is evident that Inchbald E. , Animal magnetism, a farce, in three acts, as performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent-Garden (Dublin, 1789) is taken directly from Dumaniant M. , Le médecin malgré tout le monde, comédie en trois actes, en prose (Paris, 1786). For further evidence, see also Boaden J. , Memoirs of Mrs Inchbald: Including her familiar correspondence with the most distinguished persons of her time (London, 1833), i, 256 and Littlewood S. R. , Elizabeth Inchbald and her circle (London, 1921), 74. There were editorial comments in The times on 16 and 29 April 1788. The play was repeatedly performed and published well into the nineteenth century, both here and abroad. For an account of magnetic rehearsals, see Lefanu W. , Betsy Sheridan's journal (Oxford, 1986), 124–5.

McKendrick N. , “The consumer revolution of eighteenth-century England”, in McKendrick N. Brewer J. Plumb J. H. (eds), The birth of a consumer society: The commercialisation of eighteenth-century England (London, 1982), 9–33. A recent concise yet comprehensive review of the commercialization literature is Brewer J. Porter R. , “Introduction”, in Brewer J. Porter R. (eds), Consumption and the world of goods (London and New York, 1993), 1–15. For a comparison of English and French political marketing, see Popkin J. D. , “The business of political enlightenment in France, 1770–1800”, ibid., 412–36.

For example, Herwig H. M. , The art of curing sympathetically, or magnetically, proved to be most true both by its theory and practice (London, 1700); Boerhaave H. , An essay on the virtue and efficient cause of magnetical cures (London, 1743); Athenian oracle , 1703, 71–72. Dictionary references include Bailey N. , The universal etymological English dictionary (London, 1731), entry on ‘sympathetic’ and Chambers E. , Cyclopœdia: Or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences (2 vols, London, 1728), ii, 487 (entry on ‘magnet’ — Also in the 1741 edition). For multiple connotations of sympathy, see Rodgers J. , “Sensibility, sympathy, benevolence: Physiology and moral philosophy in Tristram Shandy”, in Jordanova L. (ed.), Languages of nature (London, 1986), 117–58.

For Kircher's magnetic texts and their influence, see Godwin J. , Athanasius Kircher (London, 1979); Hine W. , “Athanasius Kircher and magnetism”, in Fletcher J. (ed.), Athanasius Kircher und seine Beziehungen zum gelehrten Europa seiner Zeit (Wiesbaden, 1988); Daly P. , Literature in the light of the emblem (Toronto, 1979), 77–79; Rousseau G. S. , “Medicine and the muses: An approach to literature and medicine”, in Roberts M. M. Porter R. (eds), Literature and medicine during the eighteenth century (London, 1993), 23–57, pp. 34–40.

For example, Reynolds J. , A view of death: Or, the soul's departure from the world (London, 1725), 33–34; Keith G. , The magick of Quakerism; or, the chief mysteries of Quakerism laid open (London, 1707), 60–69; Trenchard J. , The natural history of superstition (London, 1709), 26–27; Chambers , op. cit. (ref. 38), ii, 161 (entry on ‘sympathy’).

Thomas K. , Religion and the decline of magic (Harmondsworth, 1971).

Hughes A. , “Sciences in English encyclopaedias, 1704–1875: I”, Annals of science, vii (1951), 340–70; Shorr P. , Science and superstition in the eighteenth century (New York, 1932); for the Encyclopédie, see Thorndike L. , “L'Encyclopédie and the history of science”, Isis, vi (1924), 361–86. For Hermetic traditions, see Copenhaver B. P. , “Natural magic, Hermetism, and occultism in early modern science”, in Lindberg D. Westman R. (eds), Reappraisals of the scientific revolution (Cambridge, 1990), 261–301, pp. 275–80.

Curry P. , Prophecy and power (Cambridge, 1989); MacDonald M. , “Religion, social change, and psychological healing in England, 1600–1800”, Studies in church history, xix (1982), 101–25; Clark J. C. D. , English society 1688–1832 (Cambridge, 1985), 161–73; Money J. , “Teaching in the market-place, or ‘Caesar adsum jam forte: Pompey aderat’: The retailing of knowledge in provincial England during the eighteenth century”, in Brewer Porter (eds), op. cit. (ref. 14), 335–77, pp. 356–60.

Dobbs B. J. , “Studies in the natural philosophy of Sir Kenelm Digby: Part I”, Ambix, xviii (1971), 1–25; Werenfels S. , A dissertation upon superstition in natural things (London, 1748), 5–21. Boerhaave , op. cit. (ref. 38) is a collection of magnetic cures and recipes including ingredients like the moss from the skull of a hanged man. See also Edwards D. , A treatise on animal magnetism (1789).

James R. , A medicinal dictionary; together with a history of drugs (3 vols, London, 1743–45), i, entry for ‘arsenic’; Pomet P. , A compleat history of druggs (London, 1712), 370; magnes arsenicalis was added to the entry on ‘magnetism’ in the 1741 edition of Chambers' cyclopœdia. See also the entry on ‘magnes arsenical’ in Bailey , op. cit. (ref. 38).

James , op. cit. (ref. 45), ii, entry ‘magneticus’. Several other dictionaries carried similar descriptions.

For contemporary summaries, see: Barrett F. , The magus, or the celestial intelligencer; being a complete system of occult philosophy (London, 1801), ii, 8–13; Cavallo T. , A treatise on magnetism, in theory and practice, with original experiments (London, 1787), 101–3; Salmon W. , The compleat English physician: Or, the druggist's shop opened (London, 1693), 188. For toothache, see de la Touche , op. cit. (ref. 27), and the 1778 edition of Chambers , op. cit. (ref. 38), which included a new entry on the medical uses of magnets. For historical surveys, see Fernie W. T. , Precious stones: For curative wear; and other remedial uses: Likewise the nobler metals (Bristol, 1907), 316–22; Black W. , Folk-medicine: A chapter in the history of culture (London, 1883), 52–55; Walsh J. W. , Cures (New York, 1923), 77–87; Frei E. H. , “Medical applications of magnetism”, Bulletin of the atomic scientists, xxviii (1972), 34–40.

For a French account of William Musgrave's prescription, see Delandine A. , De la philosophie corpusculaire, ou des connaissances et les procédés magnétiques chez les divers peuples (Paris, 1785), 127. Musgrave's Latin recipe is in the Wellcome Institute MSS, 38143/A.

See: The foot of W. Dowling's 1828 trade card, reproduced in Calvert H. A. , Scientific trade cards in the Science Museum collection (London, 1971), no. 132; Warter J. , Southey's common-place book (4 vols, London, 1849–51), i, 434–5.

Harvey W. , The works of William Harvey, MD (London, 1847), 575; Erikson R. , “‘The books of generation’: Some observations on the style of the British midwife books, 1671–1764”, in Boucé P-G. (ed.), Sexuality in eighteenth-century Britain (Manchester, 1982), 74–94, p. 84. The Gilbertian term of coition was still current: Harris J. , Lexicon technicum: Or, an universal English dictionary of arts and sciences: Explaining not only the terms of art, but the arts themselves (London, 1736), entry on magnetism.

Turner D. , A discourse concerning gleets (London, 1729), 33, and Blondel J. , The power of the mother's imagination over the foetus examin'd (London, 1729), 9. See also Wilson P. , “‘Out of sight, out of mind?’: The Daniel Turner - James Blondel dispute over the power of the maternal imagination”, Annals of science, xlix (1992), 63–85 (especially p. 74, n. 70) and Boucé P-G. , “Imagination, pregnant women, and monsters, in eighteenth-century England and France”, in Rousseau G. Porter R. (eds), Sexual underworlds of the Enlightenment (Manchester, 1987), 86–100.

Leonardus C. , The mirror of stones: In which the nature, generation, properties, virtues and various species of more than 200 different jewels, precious and rare stones, are distinctly described (London, 1750), 209–10; Browne T. , “Pseudoxica epidemica or enquiries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths”, vol. ii of Keynes G. (ed.), The works of Thomas Browne (4 vols, London, 1964); Kunz G. F. , The curious lore of precious stones (Philadelphia, 1913), 93–97. For the persistence of sexual beliefs and myths, see Boucé P-G. , “Some sexual beliefs and myths in eighteenth-century Britain”, in Boucé P-G. (ed.), Sexuality in eighteenth-century Britain (Manchester, 1982), 28–46.

Porta J. B. , Natural magick (New York, 1957), 201. Later references to Orpheus in a magnetic context include Sargent J. , The mine: A dramatic poem (London, 1785), 9–10 (for this poem and the genre of Rosicrucian theatre, see Daniels S. , Fields of vision: Landscape imagery and national identity in England and the United States (Cambridge, 1993), 60–61); letter from Frances Burney to Dr Burney of 2 March 1794, reproduced in Hemlow J. , Fanny Burney (Oxford, 1986), 30; Pasquin A. , Memoirs of the Royal Academicians; being an attempt to improve the national taste (London, 1796), 118–20; Journal britannique, 1752, 264–6.

Chamberlen P. , A philosophical essay upon actions on distant subjects (London, 1715), especially pp. 6 and 18. For Chamberlen's commercial magnetic medicine, see Doherty F. , “The anodyne necklace: A quack remedy and its promotion”, Medical history, xxxiv (1990), 268–93.

Browne , op. cit. (ref. 52), 102 and several eighteenth-century encyclopaedias. See Adams F. D. , The birth and development of the geological sciences (London, 1938), 98–102.

Johnson S. , The rambler (3 vols, New Haven, 1969), iii, 271–6. This essay was referring to the activities of Knight and John Canton. Johnson may have been inspired by an erotic satire of William Watson's electrical experiments: Strong-Cock P. , Teague-root display'd: Being some useful and important discoveries tending to illustrate the doctrine of electricity, in a letter from Paddy Strong-Cock, Fellow of Drury-Lane, and Professor of natural philosophy in M King's College, Covent Garden, to W-M W-N, FRS author of a late pamphlet on that subject (London, 1746). For erotic discourse in the eighteenth century, see Wagner P. , Eros revived (London, 1990). For equivocal writing on sexuality, medicine and natural philosophy, see Wagner P. , “The discourse on sex — Or sex as a discourse: Eighteenth-century medical and paramedical erotica”, in Rousseau Porter (eds), Sexual underworlds, op. cit. (ref. 51), 46–68.

For Mesmer's transition from the literal to the metaphorical use of magnets, see Weyant R. G. , “Protoscience, pseudoscience, metaphors and animal magnetism”, in Hanen Osier Weyant (eds), op. cit. (ref. 9), 77–114. For the tripartite division of therapetic alignments in France, see Deleuze J. , Histoire critique, du magnétisme animal (2 vols, Paris, 1813) (especially i, 95), and Ellenberger , op. cit. (ref. 7), 53–83.

There is a good selection of contemporary advertisements in the Lysons Collection (2 vols in 4 parts, British Library pressmark 1881.b.6), i, Part 2 (hereafter: Lysons), ff. 155–63. These provide the basis for many of my comparisons between the practitioners. There are also newspaper advertisements, particularly referring to Philip de Loutherbourg, in the collection at the Courtauld Institute, reference ZO.CABS*, vol. i (hereafter: Courtauld Collection).

Although there were reports of a French woman bringing magnets over with her in The times of 30 November 1785 (2c).

For a detailed analysis of the appearance and internal structure of a surviving baquet, see Enselme J. Berger M. , “Le baquet de Mesmer”, La revue Lyonnaise de médecine, xv (1966), 909–20.

Bell J. , New system of the world; and the laws of motion; in which are explained animal electricity and magnetism, both natural and artificial (London, 1788), frontispiece and pp. 5–9; Bell J. , The general and particular principles of animal electricity and magnetism &c. (London, 1792), p. ii. However, contrary to Bell's claims, no English practitioners are mentioned in Le journal du magnétisme for 1852, which lists all the early members of the Society of Harmony.

Bell was faced with severe competition from de Mainauduc: See the letters from Gilbert Elliot to his wife of 4 July 1786, 8 July 1786 and 14 March 1789 reproduced in Countess of Minto, Life and letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot (3 vols, London, 1874), i, 111, 113, 285.

Bell , New system of the world (ref. 61); Bell , General and particular principles (ref. 61); Bell J. , An essay on somnambulism, or sleep-walking, produced by animal electricity and magnetism (Dublin, 1788) (the original book was by Jean Fournel).

One of his colleagues was Dr Freeman from Hatton Garden. For a running dispute in 1788 featuring Freeman and animal magnetism, see The times of 7 August (3a), 16 August (3a), 20 August (3a), 21 August (3c), 23 August (2d), 25 August (3a), 28 August (2c), 8 October (3a), 25 October (3a).

John Bell was a common name (for example, the famous Scottish contemporary surgeon), but the supporting evidence for this conclusion is: He had taught in Dublin ( Bell , General and particular principles (ref. 61), frontispiece and 77) where he published Bell , Essay on somnambulism (ref. 63); he published General and particular principles in Pennsylvania as well as London (see Austin R. , Early American medical imprints (Washington, 1961)); and the latest English advertisement I have found is 25 February 1791 (Lysons (ref. 58), f. 162v). Another John Bell (1796–1872) — Following my reconstruction, his son — Was an eminent Pennsylvanian physician who had been born in Ireland before his parents emigrated (see Turnbull L. , “Obituary notice of the late Dr John Bell, MD, of Philadelphia, 1796–1872”, Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania , x (1875), 746–50) and who in 1837, wrote an article on animal magnetism whose title indicated that it included the practice's historical aspects ( Gartrell E. G. , Electricity, magnetism and animal magnetism: A checklist of printed sources, 1600–1800 (Wilmington, 1975), entry no. 1135). I have been unable to get a copy of this article.

De Loutherbourg's magnetic activities were described as “manaductions”: Pratt M. , A list of a few cures performed by Mr and Mrs de Loutherbourg, of Hammersmith Terrace, without medicine (London, 1789), 1.

Accounts of his career include: Anon., Wonders and mysteries of animal magnetism displayed; or the history, art, practice, and progress of that useful science, from its first rise in the city of Paris, to the present time (London, 1791), 5–8; Southey R. , Letters from England (London, 1951), 304–19; Martin J. , Animal magnetism examined: In a letter to a country gentleman (London, 1790), 5–9; de Mainauduc J. , Proposals to the ladies, for establishing a Hygiœn Society, in England, to be incorporated with that of Paris (London, 1785), 1–4; de Mainauduc J. , The lectures of J B de Mainauduc MD (London, 1798), pp. iii–xii (this introduction to his posthumously-published lectures was probably written either by his wife or his female assistant Ann Prescott: Contemporary references to Prescott include Frost J. W. , The records and recollections of James Jenkins (New York, 1984), 220). Obituary notices include The gentleman's magazine, i (1797), 353 and The annual register, 1797, 19. None of these sources states de Mainauduc's date of birth, but internal evidence of his career suggests he was born around 1750.

Phillips H. , Mid-Georgian London: A topographical and social survey of central and western London about 1750 (London, 1964), 210–12, 236–9, 295: Bell's major residence was in Golden Square, formerly fashionable but declining into a commercial district and the site of the bagnio in Hogarth's Mariage à la mode series, whereas Bloomsbury Square was a prime aristocratic residential area — Although de Mainauduc is not included in the list of residents.

Porter R. , “William Hunter: A surgeon and a gentleman”, in Bynum W. Porter R. (eds), William Hunter and the eighteenth-century medical world (Cambridge, 1985), 7–34.

McLaren Colin , the University Archivist, kindly gave me this information.

Porter , Health for sale (ref. 5), 21–59; Cook H. J. , The decline of the old medical regime in Stuart London (Ithaca, 1986).

De Mainauduc , Proposals to the ladies (ref. 67), 3.

de Mainauduc J. , Veritas: Or a treatise, containing observations on, and a supplement to the two reports of the commissioners, appointed by the king of France to examine into animal magnetism (London, 1785), 275–316. Most of this book is occupied by de Mainauduc's translation of Deslon's rebuttal of the Paris Commission's conclusions.

Kilpatrick R. , “‘Living in the light’: Dispensaries, philanthropy and radical reform in late-eighteenth-century London”, in Cunningham A. French R. (eds), The medical enlightenment of the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1980), 254–80; Andrew D. T. , Philanthropy and police (Princeton, 1989).

De Mainauduc , Proposals to the ladies (ref. 67). Critics accused him of advertising free admission but charging exorbitant rates for candles.

See de Mainauduc , Lectures (ref. 67) for about 150 subscribers to his posthumously-published book. There is a handwritten list of 195 students and patients at the Royal College of Surgeons, MS42.e.l. However, many of the people on these lists remain unidentified.

Rosenberg C. , “Medical text and social context: Explaining William Buchan's Domestic medicine”, Bulletin of the history of medicine , lvii (1983), 22–42. The first edition had been published in 1769. See also Porter R. , “Spreading medical Enlightenment: The popularisation of medicine in Georgian England, and its paradoxes”, in Porter (ed.), The popularisation of medicine 1650–1900 (ref. 29), 215–31.

Lefanu , op. cit. (ref. 36), 123–4.

Letter from Lady Catherine Wright to William Withering of 5 December 1787: Royal Society of Medicine, Withering correspondence, ff. 92–94 (quotation from f. 93v). See also her letter of 25 December 1786, ff. 88–90.

In addition to references already given, see The times of 8 August 1789 (2b). The patient list includes the Duke of Gloucester, Lord Milford, Lord Rivers, Marchioness Townshend, Lady Wright, Sir James Wright, Countess of Hopetown, Lady Archer, two Lady Beauclerks and Lady Luttrell. There is independent evidence for several of these as patients.

Frost , op. cit. (ref. 67), 220–1 and 413, names Elizabeth Fry (34 on de Mainauduc's list), Nath” Robinson (35) and Mary Knowles. For Quaker medical and philanthropic networks, see Lobo F. M. , “John Haygarth, smallpox and religious dissent in eighteenth-century England”, in Cunningham French (eds), op. cit. (ref. 74), 217–53. Quakers also supported Perkins's tractors.

Benedict Chastanier, James Benamor, G. M. Serres, Taylor, Bromfield and J. Holbert identified themselves as surgeons. Dr Higgins was a subscriber, possibly Bryan. G. Winter attended the lectures: This was probably George Winter of Bristol who later wrote about de Mainauduc at length. Chastanier and Benamor subsequently practised animal magnetism. Reeve Parker has identified Dr E. L. Fox (32) as Edward Long Fox, m.d., a Bristol physician whom Samuel Coleridge defended against an anonymous pamphleteer in 1795.

Chastanier, Charles Rainsford, William Sharp, Richard Cosway, and Philip de Loutherbourg. I am very grateful to Stephen Lloyd for identifying several people on de Mainauduc's patient list, and for providing me with a good deal of information about Cosway and his circle. Patients associated with Richard and Maria Cosway included Marchioness Townshend (36), the sculptress the Hon. Mrs Damer (49), the famous opera singer L. Marchesi (112) and the surgeon Mr Bromfield (53). Mrs M. Lloyd (89) was probably Mary Moser, a famous flower painter married to Captain H. Lloyd (129). The two Lady Beauclerks (147 and 148) may have been associated with Lady Diana Beauclerk, a well-known artist and illustrator. See also Lloyd S. , “The life and art of Richard Cosway ra (1742–1821)” (Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University, forthcoming) and “The accomplished Maria Cosway: Anglo-Italian artist, musician, salon hostess and educationalist (1759–1838)”, Journal of Anglo-Italian studies, ii (1992), 108–39.

Hunter J. , The works of John Hunter, frs with notes (4 vols, London, 1835–37), i, 337. Hunter does not name de Mainauduc, but he was almost certainly the magnetist referred to.

Chastanier B. , A word of advice to a benighted world; or some of Benedict Chastanier's spiritual experiences, relative to the Lord's second advent, his new church, and it's antitype (London, 1795), 17–34; advertisements on f. 156v and f. 157r of Lysons (ref. 58). For Chastanier, Blake and Swedenborgianism, see Thompson E. P. , Witness against the beast: William Blake and the moral law (Cambridge, 1993), 129–61.

Letter of 11 August 1790 from William Cowper to John Newton, reproduced in King J. Ryskamp C. (eds), The letters and prose writings of William Cowper (5 vols, Oxford, 1979–86), iii, 404–5 (reference on p. 404). Letter of 28 July 1794 to General Charles Rainsford: British Museum Add MSS 23670, f. 71.

Martin , op. cit. (ref. 67), 21–30, 56–67; de Fleury M. , The secret revealed: Or animal magnetism displayed (London, 1790?) (Maria de Fleury wrote numerous religious pamphlets; she attended Holloway's lectures and was the author of the letter reproduced anonymously by Martin, pp. 60–63). For Holloway's advertisements, see Holloway J. , Animal magnetism (a flyer), the Lysons Collection (ref. 58), and The times of 22 July 1790 (1c) and 6 November 1790. For William Cowper's comments, see King Ryskamp , op. cit. (ref. 86), iii, 404–5, 441. In the British Library catalogue, Holloway the clergyman and Holloway the animal magnetist are listed separately, but their books give the same address. His religious texts include Holloway J. , Restoration unscriptural (London, 1789) and A letter to the Rev Dr Price (London, 1789).

Anon., Memoir of the late Thomas Holloway; by one of his executors: And most respectfully dedicated to the subscribers to the engravings from the cartoons of Raphael (London, 1827), 5–32. This edition of Physiognomy was published on 2 July 1789, around the time that Holloway seems to have started practising animal magnetism.

The analytical review , vi (1790), 154–9 (especially p. 157): Otherwise, this article defended Lavater against British hostility. For Fuseli's life and art, see Tomory P. , The life and art of Henry Fuseli (London, 1972) and Powell N. , Fuseli: The nightmare (London, 1973). See Graham J. , “Lavater's physiognomy in England”, Journal of the history of ideas, xii (1961), 561–72 for Lavater's reception in England.

Holloway charged five guineas for a course of lectures (husbands and wives counted as one person), whereas de Mainauduc charged ten guineas for a month or fifty guineas for three months, insisting on regular attendance. Yeldell gave six sessions for a guinea: The times for 13 July 1789 (lb) and Attic miscellany, 1791, 123.

For Yeldell, see particularly the Attic miscellany , 1791, 121–4. I am grateful to Donna Andrew for the following references to advertisements: From The daily advertiser, 24 August 1789, 14 September 1789, 21 September 1789, 28 September 1789, 21 October 1789, 5 March 1791, 10 March 1791, 14 March 1791, 17 March 1791, 21 April 1791, 25 April 1791; and from The times, 20 October 1789 and 25 April 1791. See also two advertisements in the Courtauld Collection (ref. 58), f. 57. Only some of these advertisements mention Yeldall by name; the later ones suggest that Yeldall (or some other practitioner) and an astrologer were drumming up business by debating against each other in public. For popular debating societies, see Britton J. , The autobiography of John Britton, fsa (2 vols, London, 1850), i, 92–95, and Fawcett T. , “Eighteenth-century debating societies”, British journal of eighteenth-century studies, iii (1986), 15–25.

Martin , op. cit. (ref. 67), 10–19, 27, 32, 52–54; Stearns S. , The American oracle (London, 1791), 616–22.

In London, there was a Mr Parker. In Dublin, a woman provided after-dinner entertainment: The supernatural magazine, 1809, 7–9. John Thomas practised in Bristol: Diary of William Dyer, 19 March and 11 April 1789. Bristol Central Library, reference B20095, SR4, vol. ii. For Bristol interest in animal magnetism, see Barry J. , “Piety and the patient: Medicine and religion in eighteenth century Bristol”, in Porter R. (ed.), Patients and practitioners (Cambridge, 1985), 145–75.

Roberts J. M. , The mythology of the secret societies (London, 1972).

Schuchard M. K. , “Freemasons, secret societies, and the continuity of the occult traditions in English literature” (Ph.D. dissertation, Texas University, 1975) and “Blake's healing trio: Magnetism, medicine, and mania”, Blake: An illustrated quarterly, xxv (1985), 20–32 are the most relevant for animal magnetism. See also Schuchard M. K. , “Blake's ‘Mr. Feminality’: Freemasonry, espionage and the double-sexed”, Studies in eighteenth-century culture, xxii (1992), 51–71.

Garrett C. , Respectable folly (Baltimore, 1975), 97–120; Danilewicz N. L. , “‘The king of the new Israel’: Thaddeus Grabianka (1740–1807)”, Oxford Slavonic papers, i (1968), 49–73.

Pratt M. , A list of a few cures (ref. 66). For Pratt as a Behmenist, see Hirst D. , Hidden riches (London, 1964), 259–61, 276–81, and Thompson , op. cit. (ref. 85), 43–44, 138–9.

Hindmarsh R. , Rise and progress of the New Jerusalem Church, in England, America, and other parts (London, 1861), 23; Viatte A. , Les sources occultes du romantisme (2 vols, Paris, 1928), i, 72–103.

Evans H. R. , Cagliostro (New York, 1931); Photiades C. , Les vies du Comte de Cagliostro (Paris, 1932).

Pasquin , op. cit. (ref. 53), 77–81; Dobson A. , At Prior Park and other papers (London, 1912), 94–127; Gage J. , “Loutherbourg: Mystagogue of the sublime”, History today, xiii (1963), 332–9; Paley M. , The apocalyptic sublime (New Haven, 1986), 51–70; Daniels S. , “Loutherbourg's chemical theatre: ‘Coalbrookdale by night’”, in Barrell J. (ed.), Painting and the politics of culture (Oxford, 1992), 195–230.

Cosway had an extensive library which included numerous alchemical and mystical texts: See Lloyd , Richard Cosway (ref. 83). Cosway's portrait of de Mainauduc is the frontispiece of de Mainauduc , Lectures (ref. 67).

Pasquin , op. cit. (ref. 53), 118–20; Brodie F. M. , Thomas Jefferson (London, 1974), 200.

Joseph Farington's diary for 4 December 1798: Garlick K. Macintyre A. (eds), The diary of Joseph Farington (16 vols, New Haven, 1978–84), iii, 710 (see also viii, 3096).

Letter of 8 December 1793 from Banks to John Pinkerton, summarized in Dawson , op. cit. (ref. 3), 672.

Baldwin G. , Mr Baldwin's legacy to his daughter, or the divinity of truth, in writings and resolutions, matured in the course and study, and experience of a long life (London, 1811) and Baldwin G. , Book of dreams (London, 1813). Baldwin's writing on animal magnetism was translated into French: Bibliothèque du magnétisme animal , iii (1818), 212–15. See Wright T. , The life of William Blake (2 vols, Bucks, 1929), ii, 31 and Schuchard , Blake's healing trio (ref. 95), 24–27, which analyses Blake's lines: “Cosway, Frazer & Baldwin of Egypts Lake/Fear to associate with Blake/This Life is a Warfare against Evils/They heal the sick he casts out Devils….”.

Letter from Colonel Cereuville to Rainsford of 26 October 1788: BL Add MSS 23669, ff. 127–8. See also BL Add MSS 23675, f. 15v, f. 24, ff. 26–27, 35–36, 54–55; BL Add MSS 23670, f. 71; BL Add MSS 23668, f. 123–4.

Rainsford's autobiography: BL Add MSS 23667.

Garrett C. , “Swedenborg and the mystical Enlightenment in late eighteenth-century England”, Journal of the history of ideas, xlv (1984), 67–81. His masonic associates included John Coakley Lettsom and two men at the Royal Society involved in alchemy, Dr James Price and Peter Woulfe: Hills G. , “Notes on some masonic personalities at the end of the eighteenth century”, Ars quatuor coronatorum, xxv (1912), 141–64 and “Notes on the Rainsford papers in the British Museum”, ibid. , xxvi (1913), 93–130. Armies were a major conduit of European freemasonry: Hamill J. , The craft (Wellingborough, 1986).

Garrett , Respectable folly (ref. 96), 175–8; Harrison J. F. C. , The second coming (London, 1979), 69–72; John Thompson MSS no. 35, vol. cccxlv, entry for 9 December 1791 (Friends' Meeting House); Frost , op. cit. (ref. 67), 221, 594–5; Bryan W. , A testimony of the spirit of truth, concerning Richard Brothers (London, 1795), 29–31.

Letter of 11 March 1786 from Earl Hugh Percy: BL Add MSS 23668, ff. 9–10. One of the women was Miss Townshend, whose mother attended de Mainauduc's clinic. See also the letter of 4 August 1789 from the Duke of Northumberland (formerly Hugh Percy): BL Add MSS 23668, ff. 25–26.

This conclusion is endorsed by John Shaw of Cambridge University, who has found virtually no references to mesmerism in the course of his research into freemasonry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

For meanings of the problematic term ‘Romantic’, see Butler M. , Romantics, rebels and reactionaries: English literature and its background 1760–1830 (Oxford, 1981). For Romantic science and medicine, see Knight D. , “Romanticism and the sciences”, in Cunningham A. Jardine N. (eds), Romanticism and the sciences (Cambridge, 1990), 13–24; Lawrence C. , “The power and the glory: Humphry Davy and Romanticism”, ibid. , 213–27; de Almeida H. , Romantic medicine and John Keats (Oxford, 1991).

For the derivation of Mesmer's ideas from those of Isaac Newton and Richard Mead, see Pattie F. A. , “Mesmer's medical dissertation and its debt to Mead's De imperio solis ac lunae”, Journal of the history of medicine, xi (1956), 275–87.

Bryan M. , Lectures on natural philosophy: The result of many years 'practical experience of the facts elucidated (London, 1806), 152; Walker A. , A system of familiar philosophy: In twelve lectures: Being the course usually read by Mr A Walker (London, 1802), 66. For other favourable comments, see Young M. , An analysis of the principles of natural philosophy (Dublin, 1800), 152 (criticized in the British critic , ccxxiv (1804), 449) and Beckmann J. , A history of inventions, discoveries, and origins (2 vols, London, 1797), i, 43–47 (criticized in the British critic, xi (1798), 361).

De Mainauduc , Lectures (ref. 67), 111.

De Almeida , op. cit. (ref. 112), 59–134.

Lovett R. , Philosophical essays, in three parts (Worcester, 1766), 423–4. John Freke compared magnets with a budding elder shoot: Freke J. , A treatise on the nature and property of fire (London, 1752), 155–60.

Hunter , op. cit. (ref. 84), i, 221–2. For John Hunter's vitalism, see Duchesnau F. , “Vitalism in late eighteenth-century physiology: The cases of Barthez, Blumenbach and John Hunter”, in Bynum W. Porter R. (eds), Medical fringe and medical orthodoxy, 1750–1850 (London, 1987), 259–95 and Cross S. J. , “John Hunter, the animal oeconomy, and late eighteenth-century physiological discourse”, Studies in the history of biology, v (1981), 1–110. At Guy's Hospital, the physiology lecturer John Haighton discussed such analogies: Quoted in de Almeida , op. cit. (ref. 112), 100.

Darwin E. , Zoonomia; or the laws of organic life (2 vols, London, 1794–96), i, 64.

Priestley J. , Disquisitions relating to matter and spirit (2 vols, Birmingham, 1782), i, 150–2. For Beddoes, see Porter R. , Doctor of society: Thomas Beddoes and the sick trade in late-Enlightenment England (London, 1992) and Golinski , op. cit. (ref. 10), 153–87. See also Porter , “Spreading medical Enlightenment” (ref. 77).

De Mainauduc , Lectures (ref. 67), 1–38; Hunter , op. cit. (ref. 84), i, 211–28.

Rosenberg , op. cit. (ref. 77), 31–37.

De Mainauduc , Lectures (ref. 67), 1–116. A hundred years earlier, mechanical philosophers had tried to rationalize the enthusiastic behaviour of the Camisard prophets by explaining these associations in terms of effluvia: Trenchard , op. cit. (ref. 40), 26–30; Keith , op. cit. (ref. 40), 51–59.

Marcovich A. , “Conerning the continuity between the image of society and the image of the human body — An examination of the work of the English physician J. C. Lettsom (1746–1815)”, in Wright P. Treacher A. (eds), The problem of medical knowledge (Edinburgh, 1982), 69–86.

Lawrence C. , “The nervous system and society in the Scottish enlightenment”, in Barnes B. Shapin S. (eds), Natural order (Beverly Hills, 1979), 19–40.

Hunter , op. cit. (ref. 84), i, 317–37, especially pp. 336–7.

Macalpine I. Hunter R. , George III and the mad-business (London, 1969), 287–94; Falconer W. , A dissertation on the influence of the passions upon disorders of the body (London, 1791). For Lettsom's role, see Kilpatrick , op. cit. (ref. 74). The Fothergillian medal was won by William Falconer, a colleague of John Haygarth, who later introduced blind trials for investigating the role of the imagination in Perkins's metallic tractors: Carlson E. Simpson M. M. , “Perkinism vs Mesmerism”, Journal of the history of the behavioural sciences, vi (1970), 16–24. For Haygarth's relationship to the network of Quaker practitioners, see Lobo , op. cit. (ref. 81). Some contemporaries drew the link between Falconer's work and animal magnetism — For example, Anon., Wonders and mysteries of animal magnetism (ref. 67), 38.

Porter R. , “Barely touching: A social perspective on mind and body”, in Rousseau G. (ed.), The languages of Psyche (Berkeley, 1990), 45–80. For seventeenth-century attitudes to the imagination, see Southgate B. , “‘The power of imagination’: Psychological explanations in mid-seventeenth-century England”, History of science, xxx (1992), 281–94. For eighteenth-century views of the imagination as a material essence, see Rousseau G. , “Science and the discovery of the imagination in enlightened England”, Eighteenth-century studies, iii (1969–70), 108–35.

De Mainauduc , Lectures (ref. 67), 41–75.

Foucault M. , The birth of the clinic (London, 1973). See Stafford B. , Body criticism (Cambridge, Mass., 1991) for eighteenth-century visual techniques of imaging the unseen, especially pp. 450–63 (on mesmerism).

Cosway was ridiculed for claiming to see a hole in someone's liver, but the ability to diagnose one's own complaints by internal visualization was a feature of the magnetic trance commented on by several English practitioners and critics. See: BL Add MSS 23675, ff. 35–36; Baldwin , Mr Baldwin's legacy (ref. 105), pp. xlii–xlviii; Anon., A letter to a physician in the country on animal-magnetism, with his answer (London, 1786), 6, 14; Pearson J. , A plain and rational account of the nature and effects of animal magnetism: In a series of letters (London, 1790), 15–20. This practice originated with Jacques Petetin, a mesmerist from Lyons (see Petetin J. , Mémoire sur la découverte des phénomènes que présentent la catalepsie et le somnambulisme, symptomes de l'affection hystérique essentielle, avec des recherches sur la cause physique de ces phénoménes (Lyon, 1787)) but was only important in England for non-commercial magnetizers receiving information about continental techniques.

MacAlpine Hunter , op. cit. (ref. 127), 270–2.

Copenhaver , op. cit. (ref. 42), 275–80.

De Almeida , op. cit. (ref. 112), 182–96. For snake venom and nature's magnetic sympathy of like for like, see Mortimer C. , “A narration of the experiments made June 1, 1734, before several members of the Royal Society, and others, on a man, who suffer'd himself to be bit by a viper, or common adder; and on other animals likewise bitten by the same, and other vipers”, Philosophical transactions , xxxix (1736), 313–19 and Edwards , op. cit. (ref. 44), 11–13.

Quoted in Toplis J. , “On the fascinating power of snakes”, The philosophical magazine, xix (1804), 379–84, p. 383.

Shelley P. , The works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in verse and prose (8 vols, London, 1880), ii, 257 (from Prometheus unbound). This was written before Shelley's introduction to animal magnetism. For further examples of Shelley's magnetic imagery, including animal magnetism, see Dawson P. , “‘A sort of natural magic’: Shelley and animal magnetism”, Keats-Shelley review, i (1986), 15–34; Leask N. , “Shelley's ‘magnetic ladies’: Romantic mesmerism and the politics of the body”, in Copley S. Whales J. (eds), Beyond romanticism: New approaches to texts and contexts 1780–1832 (London, 1991), 53–78; Grabo C. , The magic plant (Chapel Hill, 1936).

Quoted in Beer J. B. , Coleridge the visionary (London, 1959), 152; the stanza was later excised. For suggestions that Coleridge may have been influenced as a schoolboy by exposure to de Mainauduc's animal magnetism, see Cooper L. , Late harvest (New York, 1952), 65–96, and Lowes J. L. , The road to Xanadu (London, 1978), 231.

Powell , op. cit. (ref. 89); Luyendik-Elshout A. , “Of masks and mills: The enlightened doctor and his frightened patient”, in Rousseau (ed.), The languages of psyche (ref. 128), 186–230. At this time, there was no etymological link in English between a mare and a nightmare. See also Halloran L. H. , “Animal magnetism”, in Halloran L. H. , Poems of various occasions (Exeter, 1791), 65–68. In Halloran's unusual poem, only discovered when this article was in press, the female patient pretends to pass into a magnetic trance, but then leaps up to bite the magnetizer's finger.

Tomory , op. cit. (ref. 89), 181–4, 201–16, plates 222–8, and Powell , op. cit. (ref. 89). Fuseli was well known for his aphorism, “One of the most unexplored regions of art are dreams, and what may be called the personification of sentiment”. For eighteenth-century attitudes to dreaming, see Stafford , op. cit. (ref. 130), 437–50. Darwin punned on the flower known as enchanters nightshade for scoffing at magnetic enchanters: Darwin E. , The poetical works of Erasmus Darwin, containing the botanic garden, in two parts: And the temple of nature (3 vols, London, 1806), ii, 121–3. For Darwin's bid “to inlist Imagination under the banner of Science”, see Danchin P. , “Erasmus Darwin's scientific and poetic purpose in The botanic garden”, in Rossi S. (ed.), Science and imagination in XVIIIth-century British culture (Milan, 1987), 133–150.

For example, Witch of Endor and Odysseus before Tiresias in Hades. See Tomory , op. cit. (ref. 89) (pp. 124–6 relate the moment of terror to electrical discharge) and Paley , op. cit. (ref. 100), 1–18.

Donohue J. W. , Dramatic character in the English Romantic age (Princeton, 1970), 189–279; Burnim K. , David Garrick, director (Pittsburgh, 1961), 103–26; Woods L. , Garrick claims the stage (Westport, 1984).

Wasserman E. , “The sympathetic imagination in eighteenth-century theories of acting”, Journal of English and German philology, xlvi (1947), 265–72.

Plato , “Ion”, in Warrington J. (ed.), Symposium and other dialogues (London, 1964), 63–77.

West S. , The image of the actor: Verbal and visual representation in the age of Garrick and Kemble (London, 1991).

From an 1822 letter to an unknown recipient, extracted in Weinglass D. , The collected English letters of Henry Fuseli (New York, 1982), 473–4. At one of Sarah Siddons's farewell performances in 1807, Macbeth was followed by Inchbald's farce, Animal magnetism: I am grateful to Alan Gauld for sending me a photocopy of the playbill.

Burney F. , The wanderer (Oxford, 1991; first publ. 1814), 70.

Weinglass , op. cit. (ref. 145), 371.

Letter from Cavallo to James Lind of 10 July 1784: British Museum Add MSS 22897, ff. 21–22. For British anti-Catholicism, see Colley L. , Britons: Forging the nation 1707–1837 (Newhaven, 1992), 11–54.

Letter from Cavallo to Prince Hoare of 8 February 1788: Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Osborn Files/Cavallo. I am grateful to Stephen Lloyd for giving me a photocopy of this letter. Cavallo concludes the letter with a pastiche coded message “in the language of animal magnetism”: Compare the secret language of the Society of Harmony reproduced in Vinchon J. , Mesmer et son secret (Toulouse, 1971), 131.

Cavallo , Magnetism (ref. 47), 101–3. He had been writing the book since at least 1784 (letter from Cavallo to James Lind of 10 July 1784, BL Add MSS 22897, ff. 21–22) but the passage is identical in the third edition of 1800.

Others complained about the lack of faculty response: Anon., Wonders and mysteries (ref. 67), 34–35 and Martin , op. cit. (ref. 67), 29–30.

For Willis as “the Duplicate Doctor” (medicine and divinity) see Macalpine Hunter (eds), op. cit. (ref. 127), 269–76.

For Greatrakes, see: Laver A. B. , “Miracles no wonder! The mesmeric phenomena and organic cures of Valentine Greatrakes”, Journal of the history of medicine, xxxiii (1978), 35–46; Duffy E. , “Valentine Greatrakes, the Irish stroker: Miracle, science, and orthodoxy in Restoration England”, Studies in Church history, xvii (1981), 251–73; Kaplan B. B. , “Greatrakes the stroker: The interpretations of his contemporaries”, Isis, lxxiii (1982), 178–85; Steneck N. , “Greatrakes the stroker: The interpretations of historians”, Isis, lxxiii (1982), 161–77. For the royal touch, see Bloch M. , The royal touch (London, 1973), 214–28. Such associations were made by supporters as well as by detractors; for example, a newspaper columnist made a triple pun on touching (money, king's evil, touching a woman to take her pulse), and there could possibly be a fourth pun on magnetic touching: Courtauld Collection (ref. 58), f. 57. For a pun on Pastor Gesner's magnetic touch, see Monthly review, lix (1778), 61.

Winter G. , Animal magnetism history of its origin, progress, and present state; its principles and secrets displayed, as delivered by the late Dr Demainaduc (Bristol, 1801), 43–148. Winter described himself as a “practical farmer”, and he also published a book on agriculture. His medical expertise resulted from the chance inheritance of his uncle's manuscripts and medical texts: See Loudon I. , “‘The vile race of quacks with which this country is infested’”, in Bynum Porter (eds), op. cit. (ref. 69), 106–28, and Neve M. , “Natural philosophy, medicine and the culture of science in provincial England: The case of Bristol, 1790–1850” (Ph.D. dissertation, London University, 1987), 41. The book concludes with a discussion of sympathies felt over 1000 miles, the effects of the imagination on the foetus, etc. Winter's motives for publication were questioned by a book reviewer in The British critic, xix (1802), 420–1.

Perkins B. D. , The influence of metallic tractors on the human body, in removing various painful inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatism, pleurisy, some gouty affections, &c. &c. (London, 1798), 7–20. For a far less flattering comparison, see Caustic C. , A poetical petition against tractorising trumpery, and the Perkinistic Institution (London, 1803), 56–57.

Hunter , op. cit. (ref. 84), i, 317–37, especially pp. 336–7 (in the light of Blake's involvement with animal magnetism, it is interesting that Hunter and Blake were friends); letter to Withering from Catherine Wright of 25 December 1786 in the Withering correspondence (Royal College of Medicine). Priestley commented that people with “strong nerves” could resist the treatment: Letter to Rev. J. Bretland of 26 June 1791, reproduced in Rutt J. T. , Life and correspondence of Joseph Priestley, lld, frs, &c (2 vols, London, 1831–32), ii, 111–12.

See pp. 96–105 of Ferriar J. , “Of popular illusions, and particularly of medical demonology”, Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, iii (1790), 31–116, and also his comments about pp. 120–31 of Willich A. , Lectures on diet and regimen: Being a systematic inquiry into the most rational means of preserving health and prolonging life (London, 1799) in The monthly review , xxxvii (1802), 38–42. For Mackittrick, see Adair J. M. , Essays on fashionable diseases (London, 1787), 180–260, especially pp. 255–60. He did not criticize de Mainauduc by name, but commented on a brazier from Winchester called Malkin, who may have been invented for rhetorical purposes (‘malkin’ meant a cat). William Rowley castigated educated men for being duped: Rowley W. , A treatise on female, nervous, hysterical, hypochondrial, bilious, convulsive diseases; apoplexy and palsy; with thoughts on madness, suicide, &c (London, 1788), 345. The surgeon John Pearson wrote a vicous attack as a series of letters, but he published it anonymously: Pearson , op. cit. (ref. 131).

For a rare public controversy between the respected John Coakley Lettsom and the uroscopist Theodor Myersbach, see Porter R. , “‘I think ye both quacks’: The controversy between Dr Theodor Myersbach and Dr John Coakley Lettsom”, in Bynum Porter (eds), op. cit. (ref. 69), 56–78. From 1740 to 1790, there were few pamphlets written against quacks, but there was a late-century outburst by surgeon-apothecaries and general practitioners: Loudon , op. cit. (ref. 154).

The more substantial contemporary works of criticism included: Anon., A letter to a physician in the country (ref. 131); de Fleury , op. cit. (ref. 87); Martin , op. cit. (ref. 67), Pearson , op. cit. (ref. 131), Southey , op. cit. (ref. 67), 304–19 (written in 1803 and published in 1807). Some anonymous defences were Analyzer , The examiner examined, in six letters to the Rev John Martin, on the subject of his letter entitled Animal magnetism examined (London, 1791); Anon., A true and genuine discovery of animal electricity and magnetism: Calculated to detect and overthrow all counterfeit descriptions of the same (London, 1790); Anon., A practical display of the philosophical system called animal magnetism, in which is explained different modes of treating, with some medical observations on the diseases of the human body, which it is particularly adapted to relieve; together with the manner and reasonableness of absent treatment: The whole calculated to instruct every capacity, in the rational principles and practice, of the mysterious science (London, 1790); Anon., Wonders and mysteries (ref. 67).

The attic miscellany, 1791, 121; Stearns S. , The mystery of animal magnetism revealed to the world, containing philosophical reflections on the publication of a pamphlet entitled, A true and genuine discovery of animal electricity and magnetism; also, an exhibition of the advantages and disadvantages that may arise in consequence of said publication (London, 1791), 13–19 and 54–56. Samuel Stearns was an American astronomer, author of many almancs and claiming to be a physician, who came to Britain after being accused of treachery during the American War of Independence. Stearns , op. cit. (ref. 92) provides a more sympathetic account.

For example, Anon., A letter to a physician in the country (ref. 131), 10–20, and Pearson , op. cit. (ref. 131), 10–13.

Porter R. , “A touch of danger: The man-midwife as sexual predator”, in Rousseau Porter (eds), op. cit. (ref. 51), 206–32. De Mainauduc had been a male midwife. His assistant was female, and he advised his students to have another woman in the room when treating female patients. See Porter R. , “Mixed feelings: The Enlightenment and sexuality in eighteenth-century Britain”, in Boucé P-G. (ed.), Sexuality in eighteenth-century Britain (Manchester, 1982), 1–27 for the rejection by diverse groups of Enlightenment sexuality.

Pearson , op. cit. (ref. 131), 32. Anon., A letter to a physician in the country (ref. 131), 22–26 is probably a satire on the recent dissensions at the Royal Society.

For example, Anon., A letter to a physician in the country (ref. 131), 35–39; Pearson , op. cit. (ref. 131), 36–51; Willich , op. cit. (ref. 157), 120–31; Monthly review, iv (1791), 522–4.

Godwin , op. cit. (ref. 36), pp. xvi–xx. See also: Ferriar , op. cit. (ref. 157); The times for 7 October 1786 (2d) and 25 November 1788 (2d). This was also a theme of encyclopaedia articles.

Wollstonecraft M. , Vindication of the rights of woman: With strictures on political and moral subjects (London, 1792), 414–52, especially pp. 419–25. For another comparison with French sentimental novels, see Anon., A letter to a physician in the country (ref. 131), 19–20. For mesmerism and female commentators, see pp. 31–33 of Benjamin M. , “Elbow room: Women writers on science, 1790–1840”, in Benjamin M. (ed.), Science and sensibility (Oxford, 1991), 27–59. For a comparison of Wollstonecraft's position with Harriet Martineau's rationalistic defence of mesmerism, see p. 164 of Cooter R. , “Dichotomy and denial: Mesmerism, medicine and Harriet Martineau”, ibid. , 144–73, and for a comparison with contemporary women writers, see pp. 61–66 of Magner L. , “Women and the scientific idiom: Textual episodes from Wollstonecraft, Fuller, Gilman and Firestone”, Signs, iv (1978), 61–96.

Letter to Walpole of September 1788 reproduced in Lewis , op. cit. (ref. 4), xxxi, 279–81.

The monthly review, lxxiii (1785), 38–45. This uterine diagnosis was taken over from French texts. For sympathetic convulsions as a female complaint, see Rowley , op. cit. (ref. 157). Haygarth's research into Perkins's tractors was linked with his interest in hysteria. For the history of hysteria, see: Veith I. , Hysteria: The history of a disease (Chicago, 1965); Micale M. , “Hysteria and its historiography: A review of past and present writings”, History of science, xxvii (1989), 223–61 and 319–51; King H. , “Once upon a text: Hysteria from Hippocrates”, in Gilman S. L. King H. Porter R. Rousseau G. S. Showalter E. , Hysteria beyond Freud (Berkeley, 1993), 3–90; and Rousseau G. S. , “‘A strange pathology’: Hysteria in the early modern world”, ibid., 91–221.

See Schaffer S. , “States of mind: Enlightenment and natural philosophy”, in Rousseau (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 128), 233–90 for the shared language of the debate between Burke and Priestley.

De Mainauduc , Lectures (ref. 67), 195–230.

In The public advertiser of 26 June 1789, de Loutherbourg's cures were compared with those of Our Lady of Loretto. There were numerous satirical newspaper comments on his enthusiastic claims to divine power. See Tucker S. I. , Enthusiasm (Cambridge, 1972) for the changing significance of enthusiasm.

For Quakers, see Anon., A letter to a physician in the country (ref. 131), 28, and Stearns , The mystery of animal magnetism (ref. 160), 43–51; and for “methodistic cant”, see Attic miscellany , i (1791), 122. The Swedenborgians originally welcomed animal magnetism, but later denounced it vehemently: Chastanier , op. cit. (ref. 85), 30–34, and Spence W. , Essays in divinity and physic, proving the divinity of the person of Jesus Christ, and the spiritual sense of scripture: In refutation of Dr J Priestley, and the Socinian system (London, 1792). According to pp. 88–102 of Spence, the Hutchinsonian Bishop Horne wrote to the College of Physicians complaining about animal magnetism and the Swedenborgians. John Martin, a Baptist Minister, sought the support of the Bishop of London in his strong criticisms of the religious claims of animal magnetizers for harming Christianity by their assertions that divine influence was being directly transmitted to the healer: See Martin , op. cit. (ref. 67), 11–23, 51–55, and de Fleury , op. cit. (ref. 87). Martin maintained that he was the victim of a smear campaign by supporters of animal magnetism: See Martin J. , Some account of the life and writings of the Rev John Martin, pastor of the church, meeting in Store Street, Bedford Square (London, 1797), 122–4.

Letter to Lady Ossory of 1 July 1789: Lewis , op. cit. (ref. 4), xxxiv, 50–51. See also his 1788 correspondence with Hannah More: ibid., xxxi, 279–84.

Chastanier , op. cit. (ref. 85), 30–34; The new magazine of knowledge, i (1790), 123–7, 279–80, 401–6.

Letters to Adam Clarke of 25 March and 14 April 1790 and 9 February 1791: Telford J. , The letters of the Rev John Wesley, am . (8 vols, London, 1960), viii, 208, 214, 261–2. See also a couple of 1786 letters: ibid., vii, 347–8.

Anon., A letter to a physician in the country (ref. 131), 26–34. The times for 8 August 1789 (on Lady Elizabeth Luttrell), 19 September 1789 (Lady Catherine Wright), and 29 December 1789 (Lady Ligonier). De Loutherbourg's magnetic therapy was the subject of extensive mockery in the press.

Stephens F. G. George M. D. , Catalogue of political and personal satires preserved in the department of prints and drawings in the British Museum (11 vols, London, 1877–1954), vi, 645–6 (prints 7596–8). The reference to Count Phiz links this cartoon to Lavater. It was published on 2 July 1789, a few weeks before Lavater's Physiognomy. This seems to have been a real event, although I have been unable to find any written references to it. Certainly Thomas Ribright existed and practised as an optician at 40 The Poultry from 1783 to 1796: I am grateful to Gloria Clifton for supplying detailed information about Ribright from the Project Simon database.

Reid C. , “Burke, the regency crisis, and the ‘antagonistic world of madness’”, Eighteenth century life, xvi (1992), 59–75. I am grateful to Stephen Lloyd and Keith Schuchard for the following references: The world for 22, 23, 24 and 26 December 1788 and 5 January 1789. Burke had given a key speech on the constitution on 22 December, when the House approved Pitt's plan to open Parliament to enact legislation on the regency. For a political account of the regency crisis, see Derry J. W. , The regency crisis and the Whigs 1788–9 (Cambridge, 1963). Prescott's prophecy concerned Margaret Nicholson's attempt to kill the king: Macalpine Hunter , op. cit. (ref. 127), 310–13. These satires also link Cosway and de Mainauduc with Lord Rivers, a politician with a sizeable entry in the Dictionary of national biography, but scarcely mentioned in the secondary literature. He later became head of the Perkinean Institute for medical therapy: Walsh , op. cit. (ref. 47), 77–87.

Stephens George , op. cit. (ref. 177), vi, 616–7.

Coleridge S. , Lectures 1795 on politics and religion (London, 1971), 328. I am indebted to Reeve Parker for this reference and for giving me draft versions of two papers exploring more fully the links between animal magnetism and Coleridge's politics and dramas: “Albert's tricks and the politics of harmony” and “Osorio's dark employments: Tricking out Coleridgean tragedy”. Coleridge's comment comes from a letter written in 1795 attacking the political position of an anonymous pamphlet writer, and criticizing his “immediate and contemptuous rejection of animal magnetism”. A converse image of Pitt as a puppet by James Tilly Matthews (see ref. 181) is quoted in Porter , “‘Under the influence’” (ref. 8), 28.

For British reactions to the French Revolution, see: Paulson R. , Representations of revolution (New Haven, 1983); Deane S. , The French Revolution and Enlightenment in England 1789–1832 (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); Hole R. , Pulpits, politics and public order in England 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1989); Dickinson H. T. , British radicalism and the French Revolution 1789–1815 (Oxford, 1985), Philp M. , The French Revolution and British popular politics (Cambridge, 1991). Propaganda aimed at a popular audience appeared later: Hole R. , “British counter-revolutionary popular propaganda in the 1790s”, in Jones C. (ed.), Britain and revolutionary France: Conflict, subversion and propaganda (Exeter, 1983), 53–69. For Tilly Matthews's paranoic conviction of magnetic persecution, see Haslam J. , Illustrations of madness: Exhibiting a singular case of insanity, and a no less remarkable difference in medical opinion (London, 1988), 19–79 and pp. xi–xlvii (Roy Porter's introduction). Although this might be interpreted as evidence of the success of anti-revolutionary propaganda, Matthews's magnetic imagery is more likely to be related to his knowledge through David Williams of Jacques-Pierre Brissot's mesmeric activities. In 1790, Brissot turned against mesmerism and announced the existence of an underground revolutionary somnambulistic movement: See Darnton , op. cit. (ref. 7), 128–32. For Matthews, Williams and political espionage, see Williams D. , “Un document inédit sur la Gironde”, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, xv (1938), 411–31 and “The missions of David Williams”, English historical review, lxxx (1938), 651–68.

The monthly review, lxxiii (1785), 38–45 (especially pp. 38–39). This review of Godwin's translation of the Paris Commission's report may have been written by Francis Milman: Nangle B. C. , The monthly review first series 1749–89 (Oxford, 1934).

The supernatural magazine, 1809, 8.

Reid W. H. , The rise and dissolution of the infidel societies of this metropolis … from the publication of Paine's Age of reason until the present period (London, 1800), 91, and Robison J. , Proofs of a conspiracy against all the religions and governments of Europe, carried on in secret meetings of free masons, illuminati, and reading societies (London, 1797), 6. For Reid, see McCalman I. , Radical underworld (Cambridge, 1988), 1 and passim; for Robison, see Morrell J. , “Professors Robison and Playfair, and the Theophobia Gallica: Natural philosophy, religion and politics in Edinburgh, 1789–1815”, Notes and records of the Royal Society , xxvi (1971), 43–63, and Christie J. , “Joseph Black and John Robison”, in Simpson A. (ed.), Joseph Black 1728–1799 (Edinburgh, 1982), 47–52. Jeremy Bentham also linked exorcism and animal magnetism, using them as examples of how witnesses' testimony could be swayed: Bentham J. , Rationale of judicial evidence, specially applied to English practice (5 vols, London, 1827), v, 189–90.

De Mainauduc and animal magnetism were often associated with Katterfelto, balloons and gases. In particular, see discussions of the identity of Blake's Inflammable Gass the windfinder in An island in the moon: Erdman D. , Blake: Prophet against empire (Princeton, 1977), 89–114. See also Heisler R. , “Behind ‘the magus’: Francis Barrett, magical balloonist”, The pentacle, i (1985), 53–57.

Spence , op. cit. (ref. 172).

The portrait on the right could be labelled Mesmer, de Mainauduc or even possibly Myersbach — Or it might just be M for magnetism. This picture illustrated a long satirical poem directed mainly at quacks and false scholarship, using Yeldell as an example: Attic miscellany , i (1790), 121–4. For the symbolism of pigs and Burke's “swinish multitude”, see Thompson , op. cit. (ref. 85), 172.

See Golinski , op. cit. (ref. 10), 153–87 for conservative opposition to “Beddoes's breath” and references to the literature on Priestley.

Anon., The sceptic (Retford, 1800). See also The supernatural magazine , 1809, 9, and Belcher W. , Intellectual electricity, novum organum of vision, and grand mystic secret (London, 1798) (for William Belcher and his satire on contemporary metaphysics, see Porter R. , Mind-forg'd manacles (London, 1987), 263 and elsewhere). Such polemic could be effective only because it was plausible, although the same people were not exploring animal magnetism and galvanism. In the early 1790s, the English electricians most involved in debating the relationship between galvanism and animal electricity were Cavallo, Abraham Bennet, William Wells, Edward Ash and Richard Fowler: See Kipnis N. , “Luigi Galvani and the debate on animal electricity, 1791–1800”, Annals of science , xliv (1987), 107–42. The only published comment I have found by any of these men is Bennet's deadpan remark that he had eliminated animal magnetism as the cause of the problems he was having with his very sensitive magnetic instrument: Pp. 84–85 of Bennet A. , “A new suspension of the magnetic needle, intended for the discovery of minute quantities of magnetic attraction … with new experiments on the magnetism of iron filings”, Philosophical transactions, lxxxii (1792), 81–98. Roy Porter has generously searched his files and told me that Beddoes wrote nothing on animal magnetism, and Davy's lectures on galvanism do not mention it.

Pearson , op. cit. (ref. 131), 13–20, 32–35. See also Winter , op. cit. (ref. 154), 166–79.

For an interesting reversal of gendered roles, see Halloran , op. cit. (ref. 138). For post-Revolutionary denigrations of pernicious French feminity, see Browne A. , The eighteenth century feminist mind (Brighton, 1987), 155–78 and Colley , op. cit. (ref. 148), 250–62. For the construction of gender at the end of the eighteenth century, see: Schiebinger L. , The mind has no sex? (Cambridge, Mass., 1989); Jordanova L. , Sexual visions: Images of gender in science and medicine between the 18th and 20th centuries (New York, 1989), 19–42; Laqueur T. , Making sex: Body and gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass, 1990), 142–243; Barker-Benfield G. , The culture of sensibility: Sex and society in eighteenth-century Britain (Chicago, 1992), 1–36.

The times, 24 March 1790 (2d).

The times , 4 March 1795. Southey , op. cit. (ref. 67) juxtaposed his accounts of animal magnetism and Richard Brothers. For reactions to Brothers and millenarianism, see Garrett , Respectable folly (ref. 95), 145–207 and Harrison , op. cit. (ref. 109), 57–85.

Early nineteenth-century encyclopaedias continued to reproduce articles on animal magnetism (as a sub-heading of magnetism) that omitted any mention of de Mainauduc or the other English practitioners, defining it as “a fancied sympathy … between the magnet and the human body” and polemically dismissing Mesmer and Deslon. There are virtually identical entries in Encyclopœdia Britannica , x (1797), 449–50; The English encyclopœdia , v (1802), 463–4; Encyclopœdia Britannica , xii (1823), 398–400; The English encyclopœdia , xiii (1829), 428–9. However, in Encyclopœdia Londiensis of 1812, the reader is referred to the entry on juggling, where there is an account of animal magnetism derived partly from Martin , op. cit. (ref. 67). To ‘juggle’ also meant to ‘swindle’; the term may come from the title of a critical French book: Retz N. , Mémoire pour servir à l'histoire de la jonglerie (Méquignon, 1784). As just two examples of Victorian accounts: Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck reported that animal magnetism disappeared for about forty years after 1789: Hankin C. , Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck (London, 1858), i, 225; in Colquhoun T. C. , Isis revelata: An inquiry into the origin, progress, and present state of animal magnetism (Edinburgh, 1836), no English person is mentioned in approximately 800 pages covering Greatrakes to Coleridge.

For Coleridge, see Levere T. , “S. T. Coleridge and the human sciences: Anthropology, phrenology, and mesmerism”, in Hanen Osier Wyant (eds), op. cit. (ref. 9), 171–92, and Levere T. , Poetry realised in nature (Cambridge, 1981). For nineteenth-century English mesmerism, see Winter A. , “‘The island of Mesmeria’: The politics of mesmerism in early Victorian Britain” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1992), and Gauld , op. cit. (ref. 7).

Balderston K. , Thralania (2 vols, Oxford, 1942), ii, 878; Garlick Macintyre , op. cit. (ref. 103), ii, 462 (I am grateful to Evelyn Newby for this reference).

Willich , op. cit. (ref. 157), 131.

Sibly E. , A key to physic, and the occult sciences (London, 1794), 256–76. He used magnetic phenomena as evidence of stellar influence: Sibly E. , A new and complete illustration of the occult sciences (London, 1792), 28. His brother Manoah preached a sermon on spiritual magnetism at the New Jerusalem Temple: Sibly M. , Spiritual magnetism: Or, the nature of that faith which removes mountains (London, 1796). For various interpretations of Sibly's significance, see Curry , op. cit. (ref. 43), 134–7, Debus A. G. , “Scientific truth and occult tradition: The medical world of Ebenezer Sibly (1751–1799)”, Medical history, xxvi (1982), 259–78; Timson D. , “Ebenezer Sibly — Freemason extraordinary”, Transactions of the lodge of research 2429 of Leicester , 1964–65, 62–67; Ward E. , “Ebenezer Sibly — A man of parts”, Ars quatuor coronatorum, lxxi (1958), 48–52. Sibly knew Rainsford quite well: See BL Add MSS 23670, f. 353 and Heisler R. , “Precursors of the golden dawn”, Studies in hermeticism, viii (1989), 1–4.

Burney F. , op. cit. (ref. 146), 544. Burney mentioned a projected magnetizing session in a 1787 diary entry: Barrett C. , Diary and letters of Madame d'Arblay (4 vols, London, 1842), iii, 389.

For some examples, see Notes and queries , vi (1852), 127, 207, 368–9, and Stevenson B. , The home book of quotations (New York, 1967), 306.

Letter from Cavallo to Hoare Prince , op. cit. (ref. 149).

Letter to Jefferson of 1 January 1787, in Boyd J. P. , The papers of Thomas Jefferson (22 vols, Princeton, 1955), xi, 3–4. For Cosway and Jefferson, see Brodie F. M. , Thomas Jefferson (London, 1974), 199–227.

St. Clair W. , The Godwins and the Shelleys (London, 1989), 243 (a letter to his second wife, Mary Jane Godwin). Godwin also described the “magnetical sympathy” between Caleb Williams and his patron: Godwin W. , Caleb Williams (Oxford, 1982), 112.

Gerard A. , An essay on taste (Edinburgh, 1764), 168–9. Discussions of this passage include Cox S. , “The stranger within thee”: Concepts of the self in late eighteenth-century literature (Pittsburgh, 1980), 3–58 (quotation on p. 41), and Tuveson E. , The imagination as a means of grace (Berkeley, 1960), 132–63 (quotation on p. 150).

Schaffer S. , “Genius in Romantic natural philosophy”, in Cunningham Jardine (eds), op. cit. (ref. 112), 82–98; Yeo R. , “Genius, method and morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760–1860”, Science in context, ii (1988), 257–84.

McCalman , op. cit. (ref. 184), 1–94.